Once upon a time, ever so long ago, there were machines called typewriters. In my Minnesota high school there was a room where many typewriters lived, a whole bunch of them. And this was where Miss Widgeon proudly taught her class on secretarial skills, an extracurricular class where young girls like myself could acquire the skills necessary to later enter the business world at remarkably low wages. This was, of course, to be expected and not questioned for a young girl in the 1940’s.

deep sorrow

Editors, Vineyard Gazette

My spirit was bent over double in the spring of 2004 when I walked into Edgartown Books on Main street, which last week announced it is closing. At the time I yearned for a nourishing distraction and some pocket change besides. I figured art gallery or bookstore. The people at Edgartown Books took me in and, with nary a reference check, gave this perfect stranger the key to the door and the code to the cash register. Wow. After forty-some years of seasonal visits, I thought I knew a place. I was wrong.

Ponce de Leon had it wrong. The fountain of youth was never bubbling away in some mangrove swamp in Florida. Rather, it rests on a hillside in winter, during the first snowfall of the year, the Tashmoo Overlook to be specific, where on Saturday all manner of children, big and small, towheaded and gray-haired, took to their sleds.

The hill is not huge, but the view is. While the snow fell, depth perception blurred until it seemed possible to launch off the hill and land somewhere halfway to the Cape.

A January Miscellaney from earlier Gazette editions:

January is the perfect month to pull old books from shelves too high to reach at other times of the year. We came across a passage while reading the other night that set us to thinking about this first month of the new year. Most writers, we decided, find January something of a struggle, a month difficult to write about, especially when searching for a little light in the darkest part of the winter.

Next Chapter

In the 1990 sci-fi movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other residents of a futuristic Earth take their vacations virtually — by having computerized pleasure-trip experiences inserted in their brains while their bodies veg out at home. This method was presumably cheaper — and safer — than physically going on holiday.

As the Governator discovers, computer-assisted travel can be more dangerous than the real thing (not to mention the cost of even a virtual flight to Mars).